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In an attempt to ensure that anthropology was not associated with any discriminatory or colonial attitudes concerning race, and to provide a unified approach to the issue, a statement was issued in 1988 by the American Anthropological Association (AAA) condemning the misuse of culturally constructed notions of racial differences. What recent work in evolutionary anthropology has shown is that, although some genetic differences in skin colour, a predisposition to certain diseases and varying levels of ability to digest lactose (the protein in milk) or alcohol do exist among human populations, there is no evidence that cognitive or behavioural traits (such as IQ) show any variation. For this reason, human evolutionary studies have actively contributed to the demise of pseudo-scientific racial classifications of intelligence.

In 2019, the AAPA issued another statement that aimed to clarify and update the AAA’s statement. Here is an extract from this statement:

Race does not provide an accurate representation of human biological variation. … Humans are not divided biologically into distinct continental types or racial genetic clusters. Instead, the Western concept of race must be understood as a classification system that emerged from, and in support of, European colonialism, oppression, and discrimination. … Because of that, over the last five centuries, race has become a social reality that structures societies and how we experience the world. In this regard, race is real, as is racism, and both have real biological consequences.

STOP & THINK

How are the 1988 AAA Statement on Race and the 2019 AAPA Statement on Race and Racism trying to ‘decolonize’ anthropology?